by Colin Edmund Grant
January 12, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Colin Edmund Grant

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In late 1973, Paul made a business trip to Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, CT. Pratt & Whitney, a huge division of the even more huge United Technologies (then still called United Aircraft), built aircraft engines for commercial and military airplanes, and was a dominant presence in East Hartford. Pratt & Whitney employed tens of thousands in their massive plant, which was large enough to include an airfield, which was large enough to allow a 747 to land and take off. This was a large place.

Paul had made several trips to Pratt & Whitney over the years, as they used quite a bit of Datametrics' instrumentation in various labs. He had collegial relationships with several engineers there, and long-standing relationships with others, some dating back to the days at MIT and Harvard. He always enjoyed the trips to Pratt & Whitney, as he got to see old friends and to help them solve knotty engineering and instrumentation problems, which was what he loved to do. Over the years, several friends at Pratt & Whitney had suggested that he ought to take a job there, and this time, he realized that it was time.

He spoke to the appropriate people and set up an interview, and was a nervous wreck as it approached. To his great surprise, the interview consisted entirely of Pratt & Whitney folks trying to convince him to come to work there; he had no need or opportunity to convince them to take him. A formal offer to run an instrumentation lab quickly followed, and the deal was just about done.

Now there was a real decision to make. Marion and Paul were both life-long Bostonians who had no desire to leave. They viewed Arlington, barely 5 miles from Boston, as a Boston neighborhood, even if it were not formally recognized as such. They were quite comfortable in their neighborhood and home; their daughter Dorothy had only recently had her wedding reception at 7 College Ave. Their lives, family, extended families, interests and friends were all in and around Boston, and the reality of deserting it all was overwhelming.

But there were no alternatives. The closing of NASA had assured that engineering jobs in and around Boston would be few and far between, and grossly underpaid, for years to come. No raise was forthcoming from the struggling Datametrics, which had been hit hard by NASA's closing and the general economic malaise. The tax situation -- there was by now a state income tax, sales tax, the highest property taxes in the country, and a preposterous automobile excise tax whereby the annual excise tax was approximately equal to the value of the car -- was crushing. There was no choice -- they had to go. To his dying day, Paul bitterly resented having been driven out of his home by the state of Massachusetts. Marion shares that sentiment, but with a bit less anger and a bit more amazement.

Paul gave several months of notice to Datametrics, where he was by now fabulously underutilized, and he and Marion told the family of the plan. The management at Datametrics was thrilled for Paul, fully aware that he was wasting away there. The family was somewhat stunned -- "We're doing WHAT? You're moving WHERE?" -- but understood that it needed to be done.

The "three little boys," Peter, David and Andrew, were most seriously affected because they were still living at home, attending Junior High and High School. The other kids were less concerned, since they were off at college or having their own lives, and simply had to learn a new address to which to return during semester breaks and/or visits.

Marion and Paul found a beautiful house at 121 Sawka Drive in East Hartford and, in the spring of 1974, moved into it. With Paul's pay immediately increased by over 60%, the financial stress was somewhat lessened. But it took over two years to sell the large and unusually configured house at 7 College Ave in the middle of the fierce recession, so it was really not until 1977 that the debts began to evaporate.

There was a lot of good going on in East Hartford. Paul enjoyed the new challenges at Pratt & Whitney, and Pratt & Whitney rewarded him with spectacular pay raises with startling regularity. Marion, always the shy and retiring type (Ha!), made new friends and established herself in the East Hartford school system both as a mother to be reckoned with and as substitute teacher. Various offspring (Nancy; Dorothy and her husband, Murray; Janet; Carolyn; Colin) would pop in for pleasant visits at regular intervals.

It was tough on the boys, however. Peter, David and Andrew were thrust into a new high school in which they knew no one. East Hartford, a community where everybody's Dad seemed to work on the production line at Pratt & Whitney, was a far cry from Arlington, where everybody's Dad seemed to be a professor at Tufts or Harvard or BU or BC or MIT or -- you get the picture. The boys spent a certain amount of time defending themselves, and were fortunate to have each other. Peter probably had it worst of all, a new upperclassman in a new school where everybody had known everybody else for years -- except him. All three boys also had incomprehensible yet clearly acerbic tongues which they used extensively to get them both into and out of hot water. But eventually, they made their friends, and adjusted, and established the house at 121 Sawka Drive as a social center for their slightly eccentric group of cronies.

Paul bought a 22' sailboat (later replaced by a 26' boat) and moored it at Noank, on Long Island Sound, an hour's drive from the house. Some color seemed to return to his hair, and after five years in East Hartford, he looked ten years younger than when he had arrived.

Marion, likewise, went through a difficult period of adjustment before the finances worked out and she established herself in town, but by the late 70's was happier and more relaxed than she had been for 20 years. Around this time she developed the quirky habit of proudly introducing her visiting offspring to such people as sales clerks, bank tellers, and auto mechanics. She still does this, and we've gotten used to it.

As the boys graduated high school and went on their ways (some taking longer than others to actually leave), the house became remarkably calm, and no one -- NO ONE -- missed the old days. Marion still laughs out loud at the notion of "empty nest syndrome" -- "That's supposed to be a PROBLEM?!?!?"

By the early 80's, they were done paying for colleges, and Paul's pay was now five times what it had been at Datametrics. They began socking away money in 401Ks for retirement. Pratt & Whitney had a good matching 401K plan, and a good pension plan, and although Paul would only be able to earn about 15 years of vesting before he retired, that would leave them with a safe, solid, financially secure retirement.

In 1981, on the same day that Anwar Sadat was assassinated, Marion's father, Albert, died of a heart attack, a mere 85 years old. Marion, never very good at expressing sadness, stated in a vigorous, happy, upbeat tone of voice, "Oh, I am a complete mess. I have never been so sad in my life." Her mother, not exactly an emotional gusher, summed up her 67 year marriage after the burial: "Well, that's that."

By now, Marion had given up teaching entirely. In her last substitute teaching engagement at East Hartford High School, she had grown weary of a particularly unruly class, and so had taken her pocketbook and coat, walked out the door, locked the students in, and gone home. That, she decided, was enough of that.

And she went off to explore other pursuits. She became involved in the East Hartford Friends of the Library, and the Historical Society, the League of Women Voters, and the Red Cross, and made new friends, notably the frighteningly energetic Doris Suessman, her daughter Mary Dowden, and Loretta Landry, Betty Knose, and Mary Goodwin. Marion was also, just for the hell of it, pursuing a Masters Degree at Central Connecticut University in the History of Science.

On January 28, 1986, Marion was working at the American Red Cross when word of two disasters reached her. The first was that the space shuttle Challenger had blown up soon after take-off, killing all aboard. The second was that Paul's mother, Gram Cosman, had been found in a heap on the floor and rushed to the hospital.

Gram recovered, but, now 89, was not capable of living alone, so she spent most of 1986 and some of 1987 living at 121 Sawka Drive. This permanently derailed Marion's pursuit of a master's degree and put her back in the role of care-giver, a role of which, frankly, she had tired.

It was not a completely miserable period, but it was not anybody's idea of a good time. Gram wanted to be independent and resented being held prisoner, while Marion could have listed a great number of things that she would have preferred to do rather than take care of an old lady who was not exactly appreciative. Eventually, Gram was able to move back to her own home in Quincy, MA, and when she took sick again a couple of years later, she was moved, agreeably, into a nursing home, where she died peacefully in 1992.

All in all, however, the 80's and 90's in East Hartford were good years. For the most part, the pressure was off, as the kids had mainly grown up and wandered off to marriages and children and careers. There were unprecedented periods of quiet and peace and stability. Marion hardly knew what to do.

Paul had become less enamored of his job at the now shrinking Pratt & Whitney, which was becoming ever more corporate and dull. But he hung in there to build a retirement nest egg, and offset the drudgery of working for the big, slow, stupid corporation by spending more time sailing and helping out at The Mystic Seaport Museum of America and the Sea.

By the late 80's, Pratt & Whitney was handing out early retirement packages to cut down on payroll, and Paul observed that the less competent folks were getting the best offers. This made sense to management, who wanted to keep the competent people around, but seemed unfair to Paul, who found it at least ironic that many were being rewarded for poor work habits and incompetence. One day, while lunching with his boss, Paul mentioned this paradox to him, and the boss agreed that yes, it was, perhaps, unfair. Paul quietly observed that "a litigiously minded person might see it as more than unfair," and soon thereafter received a lovely early retirement offer. With a golden handshake included, with a well funded 401K in hand, and with 15 years vesting on the pension plan, Paul retired in 1989, at the age of 64, with a secure future.

"Retirement." It's not like Marion and Paul had nothing to do. Paul was working on a project for Mystic Seaport that involved a technical analysis of the sailing characteristics of the historic schooner Brilliant, one of the best maintained and fastest classic yachts in the world. (The analysis relied heavily on technical instrumentation, and by now, few in the world knew more about instrumentation than Paul.) Marion was with her usual bevy of organizations, and they both were deeply involved in the Historical Society, serving as co-presidents for some number of years.

They visited Nancy in Virginia and Dorothy in Ontario and Janet in Florida and Carolyn in Florida and Colin in Massachusetts and Peter in Connecticut and David in North Carolina and Andy in Massachusetts or Australia or Massachusetts or Australia (he moved back and forth). They took long trips to Europe twice and Australia once. They spent time on the boat in Noank, and kept tabs on their large and extremely mobile offspring.

As Paul and Marion began to get older, Paul had some health problems that were at the very least inconvenient. He had an eczema-like skin condition that had bothered him off and on since his youth, but which had been especially nasty since they had moved to Connecticut. The condition was diagnosed and misdiagnosed and re-diagnosed endlessly, and all they knew for sure was that it required constant monitoring and fastidious daily applications of expensive prescription goop to prevent gigantic, grotesque and uncomfortable outbreaks. He had a bout with lymphoma in 1996 that required chemotherapy treatment, and vowed he would never go through that again. His liver mysteriously stopped functioning in 1997, and he turned a disconcerting yellow. After a long week of testing and prodding and poking at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, during which he twice came close to death, his liver just as mysteriously started working again, and he recovered. Later, we learned that this was all probably related to a condition called ITP, which was not diagnosed until around 2000.

Marion, on the other hand, developed only some discomfort in her knees, and moderately high blood pressure. It is currently expected that she will surpass her mother's record for longevity (Annie lived to be almost 104). In any case, we offspring are not counting on using our share of the inheritance for retirement.

At various times in the 90's, Marion and Paul explored the eastern and southern coast of the US, considering that perhaps they might move somewhere a bit warmer for their last act. But they decided that they were ultimately happy where they were, and did not want to move anywhere at all. The house was paid off, and they were established and comfortable in East Hartford, for all its foibles, and so decided that it was the place to stay.

So in the autumn of 1998, they sold the house and moved to Mount Dora, Florida.

Click Part 9 below to continue.

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